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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Meet The Oil Engineer ISIS Wanted To Hire

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When al-Qaeda controlled
much of Deir Ezzor, an oil-rich province in eastern Syria, one man who
helped run its main oil field was known as “the engineer” to his
enemies.

Still in his mid-twenties, with a degree in petroleum engineering
from a university in Damascus, he was also a rebel fighter with Jabhat
al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Fighting with Nusra, he had helped to win the country’s largest oil field
— al-Omar, which he called “the pearl of all oil sites in Syria” — and
others from the Assad regime. Then he helped Nusra run them as the group
capitalized on the most valuable prize in the war.

He recalled harrowing scenes as the staff worked to keep al-Omar
running amid regime attacks. “We operated in a very chaotic environment,
dealing with some of the most dangerous things in life — fire, oil, and
gas, in addition to airstrikes,” he said in an interview in the Turkish
city of Sanliurfa, near the Syrian border. “So if you want you could
say we were operating in a smaller version of hell.”

As armed groups in Syria competed for scarce resources, the oil
eventually brought a force even more extreme than Nusra bearing down on
Deir Ezzor: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which used oil money to fund its rapid rise.

This summer, fresh off a surge across the border in Iraq, ISIS zeroed
in on Deir Ezzor, beating back the Nusra rebels in bloody clashes.

As ISIS militants closed in on al-Omar, the engineer could overhear
them discussing plans to capture him on the radio lines. Sometimes they
addressed him directly: “I will behead you, engineer.”
When ISIS won the province, the engineer fled to Turkey. Friends who
remained in Syria sent word that its fighters had descended immediately
on his home.

Then a strange thing happened: ISIS got in touch and asked the engineer to return to al-Omar and get back to work.“They actually tried to tempt me to go back,” the engineer said.

Sitting at a cafe in a polo shirt and jeans, he spoke on condition of
anonymity because he feared retribution from ISIS — and also because he
hoped to land a job with an international oil company one day.
ISIS made him various offers of weapons, cars and power, he said, but
each time he declined: “I refuse to work for ISIS. They only serve
their own power.”

The efforts to lure him underlined the group’s dedication to keeping
its oil revenues flowing — and willingness to turn even to its enemies
for help. ISIS seems to be learning the lesson that it’s one thing to
take territory from rival rebel groups and another entirely to try to
govern as the so-called Islamic state it has proclaimed.

Analysts tracking the conflict say the engineer’s story speaks to a
broader push for recruitment as ISIS tries to find professionals to
oversee its oil operations, which include an estimated 60% of Syria’s
oil production capacity and a small amount of Iraq’s. These efforts show
the group’s pragmatism — and may also indicate a desperation for expert
help. “I was fighting ISIS with arms and guns,” the engineer said, “and
yet they came back to me because of my expertise.”

This fall, ISIS drew headlines around the world when it reportedly posted a help-wanted ad seeking a manager for its oil fields.
The ad promised a salary of $225,000 for an “ideologically suitable”
candidate. While its authenticity couldn’t be verified, the idea fit
with ISIS’s efforts to find help building up its self-styled caliphate,
as well as its professed “ethos based on being administratively
competent,” said Firas Abi Ali, the head of Middle East and North Africa
forecasting at IHS Country Risk in London.

“Of course this isn’t the case across the board, but they’re genuinely trying,” Abi Ali said.

Whether for its media operations or its oil production, he added, “it
seems clear that they’re trying to recruit some capable people from the
Middle East and also outside the region” — an effort that draws on the
caliphate’s “revivalist appeal.”

“They are definitely interested in having skilled professionals help
out with their state-building project,” said Aaron Zelin, a specialist
on jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Zelin and others pointed to anecdotes of foreign experts said to be
helping ISIS in key areas: Sudanese, Tunisian, and Indian nationals
believed to be involved in the power sector; the foreigners thought to
be part of ISIS’s global propaganda productions, which include an
English-language digital magazine.

But ISIS’s recruitment efforts — both inside Syria and Iraq and
beyond — may also betray a weakness in its project to build a hardline
state. During its rise in Syria, ISIS sought to develop a reputation as a
more competent administrator than rival rebel groups in the areas it
controlled. Now that it has big cities to run, it seems to be finding
them difficult to maintain. “At this stage they’re facing a bit of a
challenge,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst with Verisk Maplecroft, a
risk consultancy firm in London. “They’ve gone from initially, in terms
of governance, doing fairly easy tasks like providing rule of law to
this second stage of really trying to run a city. And they’re facing a
lot of problems.”

This Is How ISIS Smuggles Oil

Soltvedt said ISIS is attempting to recruit foreign experts to fill
the gaps. “They will try to reach out to people with the necessary
skills to run these operations in order to not lose control of these
areas and assets,” he said.

In some cases, Soltvedt added, ISIS has also turned to coercion, a
sign that its recruitment efforts are struggling — seizing the assets of
doctors and engineers who have fled their territory in an attempt to
force them to return.

Yet ISIS’s brutality and extremist ideology are more than enough to
keep many local professionals away. Another trained petroleum engineer
living in Syria, who likewise spoke on condition of anonymity, said he
chose to become a bus driver rather than accept ISIS’s offer to help
with its oil fields. “I have rules in my life, and I believe in the
Syrian revolution,” he said. “I won’t give up on it to start working
with these people.”